The End Of The World Is Always Just Around The Corner. Why Going Crazy is Everyone's Favorite Past Time.

(May 20, 2011)

Alright, so people have been having some fun with this the past few days, and that's alright by me. But I wouldn't really be doing my job if I didn't take some of the laughs out of it and take a quick astrological glimpse at what's happening tomorrow.

Before I do, I'm reminded of a snarky but trenchant piece I read in The Economist some years back entitled, "A History of the End of the World." It showed a 1950's era picture of a little boy holding a hand painted sign reading, "The End is Near!" with the implication that, with this piece being written around 2000, the boy's prediction was a little off. The Economist has a way of taking the piss out of whatever it can, and this is funny up to a point. But using reason and snark to attempt to undermine religion has proven as much of a futile past time as trying to predict the arrival of the Four Horsemen.

No matter how hard reasonable people try to prove that religion is mindless insanity, they always seem to fail at ridding the nonsense from the planet. And yet they keep trying. Again and again. Thus, they fulfill Einstein's own definition of insanity, by trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Fortunately, astrology can show us a way out of this conundrum, and it does so elegantly through its elemental system.

The air signs represent reason, detachment, and intellectual discernment. Thus, for problems for which reason is the best guide, the air signs are quite nimble and effective at sorting them out.

But an equal player in the astrological worldview is the water sign. These signs are unapologetically irrational. They are primitive, instinctive, holistic, and emotional. But they are complete and internally consistent within themselves - and they are perpetually incomprehensible to the air signs.

Mercury, the thinking planet, does extraordinarily well in the air signs. No surprise. He is clever, detached, and swift. He rules one of the air signs (Gemini) and is exalted in another (Aquarius). In the remaining air sign, Libra, he is also quite comfortable.

However when he dips his feet in the water, he encounters problems.

Pisces is his worst placement, because Pisces thrives on confusion, chaos, and disorder. It is the most irrational of the water signs, and is thus completely terrifying and disorienting for Mercury. It is almost impossible to gain a detached, objective foothold on anything when you are drowning in a vast and endless ocean. For that reason, Mercurial and intellectual people tend to shy away from mysticism and the madness, or loss of reason, that goes with it.

But astrologically, they both have their place. Everything that is on the earth and in the air "began" in the ocean. Symbolically speaking, all of the overworld order was born out of Chaos, as both the Bible and Greek Mythology tell us. Without Chaos, and the occasional purging of floods, renewal is impossible and stagnation reigns. All of our dreams and highest aspirations - before they were made manifest - were the product of divine inspiration, which looks a lot like madness and chaos.

The other water signs, Cancer and Scorpio do slightly better with Mercury. But in both, the crystal clarity of the airy planet are obscured, and in Cancer particularly, the constant sideways communication does not reflect Mercury at his best.

We have, of course, two other elements: Earth and Fire. And between them, the 4 give a fairly balanced viewpoint of the complete life experience. And in general this works quite well so long as each remains on its own "turf." But when they - or we, silly humans - attempt to understand one element in terms of another, then we fall into problems.

In the West, and in America in particular, we have a slight bias towards Air, reason, and science. This is understandable. The Air signs are the most "advanced," the least primitive. They are represented by Humans (Gemini-twins, Aquarius-waterbearer) or Human-made devices (Libra-scales) rather than beasts, as in the fire signs or ancient reptiles as in the water signs. So we like to identify ourselves with our 'reason,' ostensibly that which separates us from the animal class and makes us human.

But so far, we have not managed, through our reason, to extract the 9 other non-Air signs from the zodiac. And they remain - despite our constant efforts - perpetual parts of the lived, human experience. So as enjoyable an experience as it is to look down on those silly water signs and have a good laugh, it is also a kind of madness to do so. Those elements are not going away. And while they add little to the abstract, heady experience of "life," they nonetheless have their own logic and power, and they are essential ingredients in the total life experience.

Which brings us to tomorrow. What's going on?Well, astrologically, we get to experience our first major aspect to the new Neptune in Pisces placement, about which I wrote earlier this year. The Sun enters Gemini overnight and will be squaring the Neptune by the end of the following morning.

This is actually a big deal. Neptune rules, amongst other things, salvation. It is the most essentially "Christian" planet, in that it has to do with self-sacrifice, redemption through suffering, ecstasy, and dissolution. Madness is also one of its monikers, and religious trance or ecstasy is one of its essential features. Alongside these rather glorious attributes lie delusion and deception, Neptune's less glamorous traits.

The funny thing is, when we're within Neptune's grasp, it is almost impossible to tell one of these attributes from the next. That is what I mean by taking a planet (or an element) on its terms. Rationally, we may try and tease apart deception from enlightenment, but when we are in the throes of a Neptunian experience, our rational mind does not know how to function. It is an extremely bizarre experience, to be so confounded where one is normally so sound. But with a Neptune experience, nothing is ever what it seems, and even after the most sublime communion with the divine that Neptune grants, we will still, in a soberer moment, ask ourselves, "Was that really real?"

But that is the wrong question, of course. That is asking an Earthy question of a Watery experience. And so we will never come up with a "real" answer. Neptune is, by definition, *not* real, that is, not logical, and not material. It is *real* in as much as dreams are a component of life, but it is not real in the concrete, the manifest, or the objective sense. This is why seeing things elementally can be so helpful. Trying to see one elemental experience in terms of another will always lead one in circles. We seem able to "disprove' the validity of an other-elemental experience, and yet it keeps happening- both to those other fools, but even occasionally to oursleves! It can not be gotten rid of!

The writers at The Economist, being Gemini-biased, will not waste time with this sort of thing. But we should. After all, the Rapture happens tomorrow, and where will you be?

The Sun-Neptune square is a rather transient aspect, but it will temporarily light up Neptune in his home sign of Pisces (for the first time in over a century) and thus give us a glimpse into the depths of irrationality marked by that sign. The most densely identified Christians will probably want to feel this at the concrete level. They will want Jesus to come down - manifest - out of the heavens and save the righteous. This is, again, putting a very earthy take on a watery experience. But for some it might even happen. To us, it may look like they ran their car off the road, but to them it might look more like Jesus called them home. And of course, who could know?

After all, The End of the World happens all the time. It happens when people die. It happens when the internet got invented. It happened on 9/11. "The End of the World" in these cases was more symbolic - and slower moving - than the typical rapture vision, but they all reflected a definitive ending of an era and the dawning of a new one, what R.E.M. calls The End of the World *As We Know it.*Astrologically, you have the option of experiencing archetypes along a vast continuum of density or fineness. At the densest level of Neptune, you will likely be possessed by madness and may even decide to raprture yourself and self-immolate in a moment of religious ecstasy. People do this sort of thing all the time. Or, you might take it a little but lighter and just have a very weird, inexplicable thing happen to you in your life- an impossible synchronicity, a feeling of a dead relative being present, or simply a "psychic" moment when your long lost friend calls you at exactly the same moment you were trying to call them.

At a finer level still, for those of us who have grown comfortable with Neptune, it could be a moment to open to our highest aspirations and dreams. It could be a waking willingness to enter and engage the irrational and see what visions are out there for us to dream on for years to come. Perhaps we have a transportive musical or sexual experience. Perhaps we take ourselves willingly out of reality through meditation or sacred medicine. Perhaps we simply sleep in and give our dreams more power to guide our days than we normally would.

All these are "potential" expressions of a Neptune event.

Collectively speaking, we will likely get the whole range. While there is unlikely to be a collective literal ascension of Chirstians thourhgout the world, it wouldn't be surprising to me at all if something else, rather inexplicable happened, that would at least perturb the purely rational onlooker. I have no idea what that would be, but I imagine it would be something pretty weird that we can't quite accept and can't quite dismiss- a little like the way dumping bin Laden's body in the ocean made even non-conspiratorial people scratch their heads.

But one thing we shouldn't really do is laugh. First of all, it's rude. The water signs are sensitive, and they do not like being misunderstood (although they are likely quite used to it). But beyond that, there is a carrot and stick element to ridiculing the Neptunian experinece: First of all, when we do, we tend to get caught up in the weirdness very much against our wills. This can be quite embarassing, and it can also be extremely disorienting when we find ouresleved to be behaving in the bizarre ways we criticized in others (The Bacchae myth explains this sort of thing very well, Neptune being astrologically correlated with Dionysos). But most importantly, when we ridicule Neptune, we deny ourselves his subtle and magical gifts:

To settle into too much mundanity appears to create a safer life, but it short changes us from the vivifying waters of our yearnings. Otherworldly beauty, a visitation from an angel, a glimpse into the passion of true insanity or impossible love - these are blessings that remind us that there is more to creation than work, chores, and the occasional chuckle. There is beauty omnipresent that we need but alter our perception to participate in. And that makes life more than what the Earth signs and Air signs can offer. It completes us by honoring the "impossible" right alongside the everyday.

So let this Sun-Neptune square enrapture you at whatever level you are able. You may be surprised at what happens. If your grip on reality and snark is tight, you will likely be quite unsettled. But it will be impossible to laugh it off, even on the next day when the influence will already have started to wane. but if you are just the least bit willing, look for a little bit of otherworldly magic to enter you experience. It be something you can share with your zanier friends, or it might be something just for you.

And in general, look to embrace the God of Chaos for the great boon it is to our world, that is, by making us seek beyond our world. What may look silly from an objective stance, may nonetheless hold great meaning to an individual subjectively. And for Neptune, that is enough.

For those whose lives may seem sterile or passionless, a little delusion may not be such a bad thing- when taken on its own terms and in balance with the air signs and their need for rational understanding. From the watery perspective, all is well, and beauty and magic are their own reward. Nothing "more enlightened" need be.

So happy pre-rapture to you all. The Sun enters Gemini at 2:21 PST tonight, beginning the square, and the conjunction should be complete by the time you wake up the next morning. I'll be as curious as anyone to see what happens then. . . Enjoy.